Hutchison bows out of Senate race; all clear for McGavick

OLYMPIA — Former television news anchor Susan Hutchison has decided against challenging U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, apparently clearing the way for business leader Mike McGavick to win the Republican nomination.

Hutchison told The Associated Press she was intrigued by the Senate race and thinks she could have defeated Cantwell, a freshman Democrat trying for another six-year term this fall. But she said she has concluded that the timing is wrong for her political debut.

Hutchison had been testing the waters for a potential race since early July, even as the party elders were uniting behind McGavick after former gubernatorial nominee Dino Rossi and former congressional candidate Diane Tebelius declined. She said she got plenty of encouragement to run, but decided against it.

"I'm not 'bowing out,' because I never bowed in. I was never in. I have just decided that the timing is not right to step into the race."

McGavick got a quicker start, she acknowledged, but didn't necessarily have the nomination sewed up. The primary will be in September, unless the Legislature moves it to earlier in the summer.

"I love a good fight, a friendly fight," she said. "Nothing about that cowed me."

Hutchison has high name familiarity from her work at KIRO-TV for some 25 years. She now runs the Charles Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences, a philanthropic organization based in Bellevue.

Hutchison said she likely will enter politics at some point, possibly for statewide office.

McGavick, the former top aide to Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., has left the top job at Safeco Insurance to make the bid for Senate. He said he's gratified at Hutchison's decision and that the GOP stands united. The party is expected to endorse him this weekend.

Democrats quickly noted that McGavick still has a primary opponent, Brad Klippert of Kennewick, who lost badly to George Nethercutt in the 2004 Senate primary.

"We have a lot of work ahead, but I'm very proud of the groundwork that we have done to bring our party together in a significant way," he said in an interview from Silverdale.

He said one of his biggest applause lines is when he talks about the Senate's "meanness, character assassination, partisanship and bitterness" and offers to be "the civil and independent voice of a true Northwesterner."

"It resonates very deeply with people," since the rancor has made it next to impossible for Congress to solve the nation's most vexing problems, he said.

McGavick, 47, ran Gorton's successful U.S. Senate comeback bid in 1988 and was his chief of staff. He has spent most of his adult life in the private sector, including a tenure as Safeco's chief executive officer.